Why you hate yourself in photos
It’s easy to look at a photo of someone else and see their beauty.
It’s also easy to look at a photo of yourself and hate it.
My hair is out of place, one of my eyes is smaller than the other one, my gums show too much when I smile, my arms are too big, you can see the cellulite on my legs…..
When you look at a photo of someone else in my portfolio you are seeing them in the second it took to take the photo. You don’t know anything about them aside from what you see in the photo you’re looking at. Their bodies don’t hold any representation of good or bad in your mind so you just see them as they are.
When it comes to looking at a photo of yourself you’re not just looking at the photo. You’re looking at yourself and at your body. You’re looking at what your body represents to you - both the good and the bad. Your body represents your feelings about yourself. When you see yourself in a photo and you still look like you it can be disappointing.
But just as you choose to look at a photo of someone else and see their beauty you have the choice to see yourself that way too. Years of diet culture have taught us to hate the way we look, to always be striving to be smaller, to always think that a part of our bodies isn’t good enough and needs fixing. It’s no surprise that when we look at ourselves our natural default is negative.
How do we change this?
Mindset is everything. Learning and working on a new mindset to help see yourself as the beautiful person you are. It’s not going to be easy or quick. You spent how many years talking negatively to yourself (30 for me)? You’re not going to decide today that you’re done with your negative self-talk and then wake up tomorrow and be 100% in love with yourself. I’m sorry to say but it doesn’t work that way. Just like we learned how to hate ourselves we can also learn to un-hate ourselves. You don’t need to learn how to love yourself either. Getting from hate to neutral should be the goal. Even if you do make it past neutral into love you’re not going to love yourself every single day and that’s okay. Get up everyday and work towards neutral. Stop making your body the centre of your universe. Start doing the things that you enjoy - simply because you enjoy them. Show up for yourself in your own life. Build your happiness around things other than your body. I promise if you make the choice to change your mindset and take small steps towards that goal everyday, one day you will wake up in the morning and not hate yourself. (It happened to me!)